Several investors including former Alabama first lady Marsha Folsom say they plan to build a bamboo processing plant in Alabama and turn the state into "the Silicon Valley of bamboo." Folsom has joined the founders of bamboo flooring company Teragren and two other partners to launch Resource Fiber LLC. Officials say Folsom will head plans to build an Alabama processing plant that will employ about 100 and open next year. Folsom said bamboo is a $25 billion industry centered in China, and Alabama is uniquely situated to capture a piece of the market.

President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney have been trading attacks over the issue of American jobs being moved overseas.

The president has pounded Romney for the investments made by his former firm Bain Capital in the 1990s. Not to be outdone, the Romney campaign has suggested most of the money from the president's stimulus program went to create jobs overseas.

Bryce Covert is the Editor of the Roosevelt Institute's New Deal 2.0 blog and a writer for The Nation.

It's no secret anymore (particularly since Obama's The-Private-Sector-Is-Doing-Fine-Gate) that there have been huge numbers of government worker layoffs during the recovery. Many are rightly pointing out that this is only making the jobs crisis worse. But what's behind those losses?

Losing your job is rarely good. Not being able to find one for months can be disastrous for individuals, and bad for society as well. Yet during the recent recession and the current anemic recovery, more people in the U.S. have been unemployed for longer than at any time since 1948.

Of all Americans who were unemployed in June, almost half had been without a job for 27 weeks or longer. In other words, 5.4 million people have been jobless for more than half a year.